


Becoming Our Own Ghosts

by the_rck



Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: Ghosts, Interstitial Scenes, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Slow Romance, becoming a team, references to canonical deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27221395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: "Think it's cold enough for hazard pay?" Ken asked because he didn't want to think about what pain Aya might be hiding.Aya made a sound that Ken interpreted as 'we can only hope.' Aya was always very concerned about getting paid properly and promptly.Ken had no idea what Aya was doing with that money. Their rooms were comped, so it wasn't as if he was paying Tokyo rent.Maybe Aya was buying diamonds or some such shit. Portable wealth that would be harder to track than investments.Omi had to know where Aya's money went, but asking would be cheating; Ken needed to figure it out himself.
Relationships: Fujimiya "Aya" Ran/Hidaka Ken
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Becoming Our Own Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cerberusia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/gifts).



> The ghosts are mostly there so that the characters have a reason to interact. I intended to have more youkai (and I think Ken is mistaken in thinking that the members of Schwarz are youkai, but I didn't think he'd draw any other conclusion).
> 
> This contains references to canonical violence. It also references stalking.
> 
> The Aya/Ken thing only barely starts here, but they've got years of canon ahead of them.
> 
> Thanks for the opportunity to write these guys!

Ken hated stakeouts. Ken hated a lot of parts of the Night Job. (It always had capital letters in his mind.) Tonight's bit of work was worse than usual because the wind was blowing hard enough to rattle the sheet metal walls of the warehouse below them. It carried a chill that made Ken long to run. If he could do that, the chill wouldn't touch him.

Lurking on rooftops looked cool in movies-- billowing coats and silhouettes against the skyline-- but, really, it was awkward as fuck because it meant staying low to avoid being seen. It meant getting rained on. It meant pigeon shit and grit and--

Even if it meant being stuck with Aya, Ken was kind of glad that Yohji'd twisted his ankle. There was no good place for anyone to take a smoke break up here, and Yohji got pissy without nicotine.

Pissier even than Aya's normal cold prickliness.

As if answering Ken's unspoken comment, Aya made an irritated sound. "Did you bring goggles? The dust and grit are going to blind us."

Ken felt more than a little insulted. He, after all, was the member of the team who always wore the damned things out where anyone could see. "If you're asking if I have extra, you're shit out of luck."

Aya wasn't wrong about the wind lifting grit and whipping it at them, so, feeling a little smug that he had what Aya didn't, Ken lowered his goggles over his eyes. The relief was immediate, but he made an irritated sound of his own as he realized how hard it was to see. He was pretty sure that _Omi_ had actual night vision goggles.

Not that night vision goggles would help when everything on the empty street below was as cold as the wind.

Ken was just going to have to work harder to see anything moving below them. There were lights, here and there, but most of the bulbs that should have illuminated the front of the warehouse they were watching were gone, some shattered, some missing. All of them within the last twelve hours.

If it weren't for the thing with the lights, Ken would think they were wasting their time, but nobody went to that much trouble to keep people from seeing when there was nothing to see.

"As long as one of us can see," Aya said. He had one hand shielding his eyes, and he sounded pissed off, but Ken had concluded weeks ago that that was just Aya's normal.

Ken had a deep suspicion that Aya knew he was bad at dealing with people and aimed for sour, irritable, and angry because he could more or less predict the results. It was a form of deflection, like Yohji's flirting and Omi's smiling innocence.

"Think it's cold enough for hazard pay?" Ken asked because he didn't want to think about what his teammates were trying to hide. He had enough tragedy of his own, and he, Omi, and Yohji had always gotten along fine by pretending the masks were true.

Aya made a sound that Ken interpreted as 'we can only hope.' Aya was always very concerned about getting paid properly and promptly.

Ken had no idea what Aya was doing with that money. Their rooms were comped, so it wasn't as if he was paying Tokyo rent.

Aya probably didn't gamble, not that way, and he wasn't buying drugs or sex. Kritiker wouldn't tolerate that.

Yohji used his money to maintain several fallback identities. He didn't actually spend much on his party lifestyle because knowing bartenders all across Tokyo came under 'work expenses.'

Ken experimented with imported foods and craft beers. He still had money left over to make anonymous donations to sports programs for kids. He didn't see a point in saving; this wasn't the sort of job a person could quit or retire from.

Maybe Aya was buying diamonds or some other shit that was small and valuable-- portable wealth that would be harder to track than investments. Harder to turn into cash in a new place, too, but... Tradeoffs.

Maybe Aya was supporting his grandparents. Or dozens of purebred poodles. Or--

Omi had to know where Aya's money went, but asking would be cheating; Ken needed to figure it out himself.

Omi wouldn't tell anyway.

Ken wasn't 100% certain that Omi actually got paid. If Omi did get paid, he spent it all on equipment for the Night Job. There was a reason Ken thought Omi probably had night vision goggles.

Ken shook his head to rattle those thoughts loose. "Why use us?" Ken asked. "This is more-- We do what we do, and it's not watching buildings and taking notes on what we see. A camera could do this better." A camera wouldn't start stiffening and going numb, either. "Cheaper, too, I bet. Cameras never ask for hazard pay."

The quality of Aya's silence changed. After a moment, he inhaled loudly enough that Ken could hear the air moving. "There is a camera, a Kritiker camera," he said. "Probably more than one because we can turn our heads, and cameras that move are harder to install." He pointed. "I'd put them there, there, and there."

Ken was a little surprised to recognize wisps of humor in Aya's voice. There was also a confidence to the words that Ken hadn't heard from Aya before.

"If what we see doesn't match what the camera picks up," Aya went on, "this won't be a Kritiker problem." He hesitated then added, "It will still be a problem; it just won't be something Kritiker's equipped to handle." He sounded like a runner who'd finished a marathon only to find out that the trains had stopped running and that he had to walk home.

The street below remained stubbornly empty.

"International? Is Kritiker thinking we'll miss something or that the cameras will?" Ken wondered if Aya was talking about espionage rather than crime. But that wouldn't explain the camera thing.

"I shouldn't have said anything." Aya shook his head. "It's... It's not relevant for Weiss." He turned to look at Ken. "The team I was on before this one did a lot of surveillance, so we all knew." He raised his hands to his mouth and blew on them. After a few breaths, he lowered then and started rubbing them together.

Ken also didn't have extra gloves, but he thought he should talk to Omi when they got home because those were really basic equipment, and Kritiker ought to provide. He snorted. "Yeah. You can't drop a hook like that and just leave it--"

Something moved on the street below. The light was bad enough that Ken couldn't make out a lot of physical details, but he thought he could estimate the person's height. The person's movements looked familiar. Their hair--

Ken frowned as he tried to place the familiarity.

"Fuck." Aya put his hands on Ken's shoulder and yanked him backward so that they were both flat on their backs. "Don't get back up," he whispered as he tightened his grip to make it harder for Ken to move.

Ken struggled for a moment, but he didn't try for anything more than the most perfunctory resistance. Then he went completely still. "What the fuck, Aya? You have a twin." He kept his voice quiet but didn't bother filtering his anger out of the words. "A twin buying explosives from the yakuza."

Was that how Aya spent his pay? That seemed unlikely to say the least. If nothing else, C4 took more storage space than diamonds.

Ken could almost hear Aya consider saying yes. The quality of that hesitation announced clearly that the man on the street below wasn't Aya's twin. A cousin trained by the same kendo master? An impersonator? Why would anyone pretend to be Fujimiya Aya?

"Not here," Aya said softly. "Too--" The word held an audible tremor.

Aya was afraid. Was Aya afraid of Ken or afraid of what Ken was seeing?

"Too cold," Ken said, taking pity on Aya. Ken suspected that the real risk was Ken losing his temper and raising his voice. He just wasn't sure if the problem would be him beating the shit out of Aya for being a traitor or the noise drawing attention from something more dangerous than he and Aya could handle.

Ken really didn't think Aya was worried about the Russian mob so this kind of had to be the sort of bullshit that involved ten thousand year old martial arts masters and curses and-- Ken had watched too damned many movies.

Aya freaking out over the Russians or whatever other group made pretty solid sense. Apart from the thing about the cameras.

Neither of them risked standing as they moved toward the ladder that would take them back to the ground. Ken hated that sort of scuttling, but it went with rooftop surveillance.

Another reason Ken hated jobs like this one.

They got overbrewed tea and microwaved curry buns from a convenience store because they needed something hot and because making a purchase gave them access to the toilet and, more importantly, soap and hot water for getting the grime and rust off their hands.

This time of night, this neighborhood, the convenience store clerks were professional about not letting themselves notice guys like Aya and Ken who looked the wrong kind of dirty but weren't making any trouble in the store.

As they left the store, Aya said, "If Omi doesn't already know, Manx will dismember me for talking about it where he can hear." His words sounded more uncertain than Ken had ever heard from Aya before.

"We'll have to tell him something. Tomorrow. No reason to wake anybody up. We can figure it out before the shop opens." Ken wasn't sure what Aya was getting at, and Ken really wanted the safety of home so that he could get warm and think. 

He was pretty sure that punching Aya wouldn't force him to tell the truth. Ken would simply find it satisfying. He liked simple solutions. He let that show on his face. 

Aya made a frustrated sound and stopped under a streetlight. He raised his eyebrows as he studied Ken's face. "Omi. Do you really think he hasn't bugged our rooms?"

Now that he thought about it, Ken was quite sure that Omi had. He didn't like the idea, but he also knew there was damn all he could do about it. At least he'd never brought anybody home after a hot date. "Does Yohji know?" Ken really hoped that he didn't because intentionally making Omi listen to Yohji have sex was--

Maybe Ken needed to punch Yohji.

Yohji would probably respond with a joke about repressed sexuality. Just about anything Ken or Omi did could be turned into a dirty joke when Yohji wanted to get a dig in.

Aya's lips twisted as if he was suppressing a smile. "Without a doubt."

Ken definitely needed to punch Yohji. Or accidentally include some of his carefully maintained clubbing clothes when he washed a load of cheap red bandanas. Ken could find a reason for buying a couple hundred cheap bandanas. Some of them would run.

It was too cold for Ken's ears to burn, but he thought they should. He opened his mouth twice to speak but couldn't find words. He swallowed some of his tea. "That makes the teasing worse."

It had already been embarrassing.

Aya bent his head over his cup and inhaled steam. When he looked up, he said, "Only if Omi's that innocent." 

Ken hoped that the heat of the tea through the cup was enough to warm Aya's hands. Ken shook his head because he shouldn't be thinking about Aya's hands. 

Ken turned away and started walking. "Where are we going?" 

Ken wanted Omi to be that innocent. He wouldn't go so far as to say that he needed Omi to be that innocent because Ken knew he wasn't, but... Ken kind of did. Ken wanted some way in which he could still pretend that Omi was allowed to be young and protected. "There aren't many places warm and private this time of night."

"Love hotel."

Ken spun to stare at Aya, hoping it was a joke, but Aya looked entirely serious.

"There's one about ten blocks that way." Aya jerked his head west. "It won't be clean, but it'll be warmer than a park bench and more discreet than a subway platform."

Ken considered that and wished that Aya was wrong, preferably in some obvious way that Ken could use as a shield. Of course, the idea of him and Aya going somewhere... nonprofessionally... was in his head.

It wouldn't ever happen because Aya was Aya, but if it did, it sure as hell wouldn't be in a room that Omi had bugged. Maybe a rooftop with better weather and no cameras and a blanket to lie on?

"Kritiker will cover it," Aya added, shattering Ken's train of thought.

"That would be what matters to you." Ken couldn't quite keep a bitter twist out of the sentence. He shouldn't have been surprised; Aya was pretty, but he was cold, and Ken had damn all to offer.

Ken needed to get out more, meet people who weren't Kritiker, people who weren't gracefully lethal.

Aya shrugged. "It should matter to you, too. Money disappears when you really need it."

Yeah, Aya was definitely buying diamonds. Possibly he carried them in the seams of his coat or in hollows in the soles of his work boots. Or maybe the hilt of his katana. Would that change the balance each time he added one?

Or maybe he just had one hell of a pricey locker at a bus station somewhere in the boonies.

Ken started walking again. "If it disappears then, why save? It won't be there no matter what I do." He didn't have to turn back to know that Aya looked lethally pissed off.

"It matters." The words sounded like they were coming through clenched teeth. "When it's the only tool you have, it matters."

Ken was pretty sure that, as with the comments on Omi's non-existent innocence, Aya was offering unpleasant truths to--

Just what was Aya trying to do? Whatever it was, Ken needed to derail it.

"Is what you have to say worth all of this cloak and dagger bullshit?" Ken still didn't look back. "If you can explain it all in under ten minutes, I'm happy to stand in an alley and discuss it."

Aya caught up with Ken and walked beside him, matching pace for pace. "I can't go home tonight." The words were almost inaudible. "You shouldn't; I can't."

Ken considered that. "They knew you-- we-- were there. We're being followed." He bumped his shoulder against Aya's as if they really were two buddies out for a walk.

"Maybe." Aya didn't add to that for several seconds. "That might be it; it might be... If I hadn't been there with you, what would you have told Kritiker?"

Ken didn't like the answers he came up with, so he asked, "Are we likely to have this asshole showing up again?" 

Aya's silence was answer enough.

"A love hotel won't lose a tail," Ken pointed out.

"Trust me that far." Aya's words sounded more like a plea than an order, so Ken stopped arguing.

Ken could still call for backupg; love hotels probably had pay phones.

____

"They got us on camera coming in," Ken murmured as he and Aya climbed the stairs to the room they'd rented for the next three hours.

Aya shrugged. "No one will care."

Ken frowned then forced his face to smoothness. "I thought you were worried about being followed."

"They won't try to come in here. It's too... human," Aya replied. "They're also not... They're not good at remembering that electronic surveillance is a thing." After a moment, he added, "If it wasn't the middle of the night, I'd suggest going to a gym. A really packed train would work, too, better even because it moves. The sweat and all of that confuses them."

How was this his life? "Sweat." Ken took a deep breath. "Okay then." He tried to keep the disbelief out of his voice and hoped that Aya was right on all counts. He felt like the third floor of a love hotel was the wrong place to get cornered by any kind of enemy. There was only one exit from the building, and the cameras would be a huge problem if they had to kill anyone.

Kritiker might or might not deign to cover their asses when the police started looking for them.

Ken shook his head once and focused on getting to the dubious sanctuary of their room. He'd just have to detour to yank the tape if it came to that, yank the tape and pray that the footage hadn't been copied off-site.

They ended up sitting on the floor because neither of them really wanted to take time to put clean-- supposedly clean-- sheets on the bed. The sheets stank of the sort of soap Weiss used for their work clothes, so maybe they were clean.

Ken just didn't want to think about what had been on them to require that level cleansing. He was more likely to catch something nasty from blood splatter while he was working than he was to pick something up from these sheets, but he _knew_ what sort of things that detergent was meant to deal with.

The tile on the floor wasn't any worse than the rooftop where they'd been doing surveillance. It had probably once been white with blue accents, but the grayness seemed to be more from wear than from bodily fluids or spilled drinks.

Ken considered his life and decided not to think too hard about why he wanted to avoid the sheets. "At least there's no wind," he said as he settled.

Aya snorted a laugh. "If they didn't notice us on that roof, it was because the wind was helping us out."

"But you think they did?" Ken had been assuming that was the reason for Aya's current paranoia.

Aya sat seiza with his hands on his thighs. 

Ken wondered if Aya had always sat that way or if it was a kendo training thing. Either seemed possible. Ken had settled with his legs crossed because nothing that happened on the floor of a love hotel could possibly be formal enough to require seiza.

Aya's fingers curled into a fist then relaxed then curled again. "I don't know. It's..." He raised his eyes to meet Ken's. "If they noticed us and just wanted to-- to yank my tail, that's the least bad of the options."

Ken didn't have much to say in response, so he kept his eyes on Aya's face and waited.

Aya raised a hand. "That's option one." He uncurled one finger. "Option two is that someone's impersonating me going into... places like that in hopes of getting me into trouble." A second finger went up. "Option three, they knew that someone from my team would be there, and..." He shrugged.

"It was supposed to be me and Yohji tonight." Ken hadn't considered that. He didn't like it at all.

Aya's expression twisted a little. "Neither of you are inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt."

Ken thought that was an unfair call, but he couldn't figure out how to word an objection. Sure, his first interaction with Aya had been... Ken shook his head. "I said I was sorry for punching you. I'm sure I can find some nice flowers to make it sincere."

Aya glared at him for several seconds. "The worst option," he said softly, "is that Yohji set me up for this." He shook his head. "I don't think he did, but that's the worst option." He gave Ken a long, considering look. "I don't think you did because you're not that good a liar. I don't think Omi did because he has much easier ways to fuck with me."

Ken wasn't touching any of that. He also thought Aya was getting very far off track. "But who are 'they?' You keep talking like I know or like saying real words will make them appear like that ghost in that American movie. Whatsit--?"

Aya's lips twitched. "Beetlejuice?" He lowered his hand.

Ken thought that sounded right, so he nodded.

"There are a lot of stories about names." Aya sighed. "But it's more that I don't think you'll believe me." He looked away. "Believing in spirits and demons and all that is... old fashioned."

Ken didn't have the words to answer the implicit question about trust, not immediately. He considered what he'd seen. He thought about every mission he'd had with Aya, both the planning and the active bits. He tried to remember details of shared shifts at the Koneko. "You have information I don't," he said at last. "I saw something tonight, and I don't have an explanation."

Ken really hoped that Aya would understand the answer without Ken having to say the words. _I trust you for this_ seemed like too big a commitment, too much to say out loud. "I know-- knew-- guys, older guys, who swore they'd seen things."

Ken had always assumed that those stories grew in the telling. An alley cat could grow and twist into a monster with a little imagination and the right light.

Aya relaxed a little. Then he tilted his head as if he was trying to put a question into words.

Ken pre-empted him by saying, "Whoever-- whatever-- that was, they moved _exactly_ like you do." Ken thought he needed to underline that. "What? Omi's the only one of you I couldn't spot by that." He knew that that said bad things about Omi's sense of self.

Omi wasn't an actor; Omi was a liar. He lied to himself most of all. Kids who could change like that-- fast, smooth, and without preparation-- at seventeen had had to learn to be chameleons in order to survive.

Ken knew that no one on the team, no one he'd met after joining Kritiker would believe that Ken understood people that well, but Ken knew kids.

Whatever lies Ken clung to for his day to day peace of mind, Omi had stopped being a child long before he and Ken first met. Omi just kept up appearances well enough that it was easy to forget when Ken needed to.

"Omi--" Aya began. Then he shook his head. "It's not important. Just... I have a stalker. Maybe two. Maybe more. The shapeshifting makes it confusing. They... said they liked my hair." Aya raised a hand to touch his hair behind his left ear. He looked like he'd rather be anywhere else in the world than here and having this conversation.

Ken blinked. "It's not dyed?" He'd assumed that it was and that Aya kept dying it, even though it had to be a pain in the ass, because it looked so good.

Aya gave an unhappy laugh. "No, and it won't take dye now or respond to bleach. I can't cut it, either."

Ken wondered how Aya would look when his hair got long. Could he even still do missions when it got long enough to sit on? Aya probably still had years before he needed to worry about it, but the not breaking thing sounded like a real disadvantage in the field. Eventually, someone would grab Aya's hair or it would snag on something. Either could get him killed.

Maybe that was the point.

Ken shivered. "Not good." He knew the words were completely inadequate. He thought about what Aya had said. "When you said they might be yanking your tail--" He hesitated because the question was ridiculous. He cleared his throat. "Do you _have_ a tail?"

Aya stared at Ken for several seconds then started to laugh. "I'm human," he said. "Completely. I promise." He smiled and shook his head. "I should have phrased it differently. It's just... a thing they said."

"Okay," Ken said. He didn't want to think too hard about why Aya would take a phrase from a stalker as a go-to metaphor, but escalating was a thing stalkers did. "Let's put aside the whole thing about--" He waved a hand to indicate everything that wasn't human normal. "You've got stalkers." He nodded firmly. "They don't know where you live, and we need to keep it that way."

"Accurate as far as it goes," Aya replied. There was a dryness in his voice that Ken would normally take for sarcasm but now realized was humor that Aya didn't-- quite-- trust Ken to share.

It was kind of endearing.

"It's something we can tell Omi and Yohji. The worst that happens is tighter security and a lot of murdery vibes aimed at the stalkers." Ken was quite sure he knew Omi and Yohji that well.

Yohji objected to stalkers on general principle. 

Omi objected to obsessive security risks for rather more specific reasons. The Koneko and their apartments would be a bitch and a half to fully secure. Weiss relied a lot on the fact that nobody looked beyond the surface.

Aya didn't look entirely satisfied.

"Unless you tell me a lot more," Ken said, "there's not much more I can offer. Like-- Would a priest help? An exorcist? Mirrors at all the doors and windows?"

"I don't know." Aya spread his hands. "Manx told me that I... shouldn't experiment. She thought it would blow over once they lost track of me. She said there's always something prettier to catch their fancy."

Ken took that as 'hoped it would blow over.' "That seems... optimistic."

It happened, certainly, but it was a lot like crossing a street blindfolded. The less you knew about the street, the more dangerous it was, but it wasn't ever completely safe.

Aya didn't answer. Instead, he closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. "We've got a couple of hours, and we've both got shifts tomorrow. You can have the bed if you're willing to put the sheets on."

Ken rejected several things he wanted to say because he didn't want to start a fight. He'd get real answers later. Probably.

Ken could be patient. "The bed's big enough for both of us," he said, "and we're both still chilled."

Aya might or might not have understood the implicit offer to guard each other's backs, but he made a grumbling noise and stood. Five minutes later, they were stretched out next to each other, back to back so that neither of them could be surprised.

Both of them maintained, after, that they hadn't really slept. They weren't that exhausted, and they weren't that safe.

And the elbow Aya smashed into Ken's kidney half an hour in was entirely deliberate and not a panicked reaction to almost falling asleep. Ken said so, and Aya agreed, so it must have been true.

"At least I punched your face," Ken grumbled.

"Be glad I didn't use a knife," Aya replied.

Neither of them moved again until they were five minutes from the end of their rental.

____

When it started, Ken was in the back, getting ready to take out the rubbish. He heard the bell chime as the front door opened, and he wondered which of the others had unlocked the door and raised the gate.

He'd made sure everything out there was closed. He knew he had.

Probably, it was Manx; Ken couldn't think of anyone else the others would let in when they were all ready for dinner and a quiet night in. He hoped it wasn't another mission or, at least, not an urgent one. He'd already heard thunder, and downpours never made any mission easier.

Ken tried to open the back door. It wouldn't open. He set down the rubbish and pressed his shoulder against the door before he thought to check the lock. 

The bell at the front door chimed again.

The back door wasn't locked; it should have opened. Possibly something had warped in the door or in the frame.

Ken put his weight and the muscles of his legs into forcing the door open.

It didn't budge.

Ken didn't like that, but he didn't want to panic whoever was out front with the rest of the team. The door opening twice meant it probably wasn't Manx.

She wouldn't have left so rapidly, but maybe the two chimes meant there wasn't anyone out there with the guys after all.

Ken could hope.

Except... He hadn't heard Omi say anything at all. No greeting, no apologetic words about the shop being closed. He also hadn't heard anyone demanding hands in the air and the emptying of the till. Now...

There wasn't any sound from out front. None at all.

Suddenly, Ken was very worried about what was going on in the shop. He hadn't given Aya's weird, magical stalker any thought in the last couple of weeks, but maybe he should have sprinkled holy water on the threshold or talked to an exorcist after all.

He'd spent three months watching for shapeshifters in every shadow, waiting for something undeniably weird to happen. Nothing had, and Ken had relaxed. Now, Ken was thinking that, if sharpened steel could stop the stalker, Aya wouldn't have a stalker any more.

And it wasn't like Aya carried his katana with him to the Koneko. There wasn't a way to hide it or to explain it, and it would have knocked over a hell of a lot of flower arrangements.

The security feed reassured him that the rest of the team was still alive, but it didn't give him much else. 

Yohji was smoking-- No. Yohji had a cigarette in his left hand, and his right hand was reaching for his watch in that very particular way that told Ken that Yohji was thinking about drawing his weapon. 

As Ken watched, half of Yohji's cigarette dropped off and drifted toward the floor. There'd been a long enough pause in Yohji's movements for that much paper and tobacco to turn to ash.

Omi stood behind the counter. He and Yohji were both looking at Aya.

Aya was staring at the empty space just inside the front door. As Ken watched, Aya bowed deeply toward nothing at all. He held the bow for far too long.

After several seconds, Ken realized that Aya wasn't going to straighten from the bow. Movement elsewhere on the screen caught Ken's eye as Omi also bowed.

Omi's bow was only a respectful greeting, but it broke the tension somehow.

Yohji let his right hand drop to his side. He turned to look at his cigarette then shook his head. He dropped the butt and ground it out under his foot.

Neither Omi nor Aya reprimanded him.

Ken had no fucking clue what was going on out there.

Except that Aya had talked about things people could see and cameras couldn't and things cameras saw that people didn't. Something weird had come into the Koneko.

____

Half an hour later, Ken still had no fucking clue. He could see the ghosts now that he was in the same room with them.

With Aya's parents.

All of them could see the ghosts; only Aya could hear them.

Ken suspected, based on the intensity with which Yohji was watching the ghosts, that Yohji could read their lips. At least that would make sense of why Omi had left the former detective watching the family reunion while he investigated Ken's issues with the back door.

The front door wouldn't open, either. Nor would any windows. The phone didn't work. They couldn't go upstairs, but they could still go down to the mission briefing room and the small suite of rooms that constituted their medical station, their Night Job related laundry, showers and a bath.

They tried to open the hidden door down there that was meant as their escape if enemies came to the shop, and it didn't budge. Ken wasn't ever going to be thrilled about the idea of going out into the sewers during a thunderstorm-- or at any other time-- but having the option would have been wonderful.

While they searched for an exit, Ken asked, "Are we supposed to give them some sort of offering? It's not Obun yet, but--"

"It's not Obun _here_ yet," Omi corrected. He stopped walking. "We can't do it properly," he admitted after a moment's thought. "We've only got post-mission snacks and the go bags."

Ken wasn't sure if the honored dead would accept canned coffee or sports drinks instead of sake. Dried fruit and preservative heavy mochi weren't anything like freshly prepared rice. He decided that the subject was above his paygrade. 

Aya was pretty sure to have an opinion.

Which brought up another concern. "How sure are we? That they're his parents and not--" Ken waved a hand to indicate an ocean of other, mostly stalker shaped, options.

"What else could they be, Ken-kun?" Omi's tone of voice and earnest expression almost convinced Ken that Omi meant the question to be rhetorical.

But Omi often lied, so Ken shrugged and said, "There are nasty things out there that even Kritiker avoids. We all know that." He hoped that was vague enough not to get Aya into trouble with Manx if Omi didn't already know. 

Ken sort of thought that the risk of all of them getting eaten or whatever terrible things a shapeshifter might do to them justified telling Omi about the shapeshifting and tails and whatever else. Omi couldn't do shit about a threat he didn't know about, and Ken had never liked implying that Aya's stalker was human.

Ken respected Manx, but he'd rather leave her corpse in a dumpster than lose any one of his three teammates.

Yohji'd help. Well, probably. Possibly. He got weirdly sentimental sometimes.

"Yeah." Omi nodded. "Mostly because they're only large scale nasty when we piss them off." He blew dust off the top of a box of granola bars. "There are other organizations that work that side of things." He sounded very matter of fact.

Omi knew.

Some of the tension left Ken's shoulders. "Fucking with Aya is small scale," he said tentatively.

"And kind of really easy," Omi added. He still didn't sound worried. He turned to look directly at Ken. "He won't thank you for taking this away, not even if it's not real." Omi gave his best creepy doll smile. "It's not like any of us can protect him if it's not. Unless there's something you haven't told me...?"

Ken shook his head. His words had evaporated.

Omi nodded, unsurprised. His jaw tightened a little. "All we can do is observe, treat it all as real, and search for a way out." He pulled more packages from the snack cupboard. "I wouldn't worry, not unless the storm moves on and they don't leave with it."

"I don't want any of us hurt." Ken felt like he had to be clear that he wasn't only worried about Aya.

"If they were a grenade--" Omi sounded detached. "--they'd have exploded by now. For maximum damage. I don't think you or I or Yohji-kun are in danger. Not physically, anyway. If they'd told Aya-kun to kill us all right after they walked in--" Omi shrugged.

Ken hadn't even considered that as a possibility. He swallowed. He squeezed his hands as if he were extending his blades. He supposed that fighting Aya wouldn't be a terrible way to go. It would be a hell of a fight given how Aya moved.

"I'm not bringing out weapons," Omi told him a little tartly. "No need to escalate." He studied Ken for a moment. Omi sighed. "Right now, being polite and treating them as actually Aya's parents won't make us any more likely to die if they're not." He spoke slowly, sounding as if he was trying to avoid long words that might confuse Ken.

Ken thought very seriously about punching Omi. Punching someone would put the world back in proper order.

Ken didn't do it because he was pretty sure that Omi could disassemble him without ever once dropping his so-pleased-to-have-your-business smile. There were ways Ken could take Omi, but a haymaker wasn't one of them.

"I hate this magic bullshit," Ken muttered. He suspected that he'd be saying that a lot going forward because the weird shit wasn't likely to leave Aya in peace which meant not leaving Weiss in peace.

"I'm going to need you and Yohji doing research," Omi said. "I don't have time, and Aya's banned from it. I don't think fighting Manx on the subject will do anything but piss her off. She was very sure Aya was safe." He handed Ken two cans of heavily sweetened coffee. "Safe for the rest of us, that is. She doesn't give a fuck about protecting him, not if it gets hard. Just..." 

Omi picked up two bean buns wrapped in plastic and so filled with preservatives that they'd likely last longer than the pyramids. "This 'magic bullshit' is the sort of thing that will follow you. Once you look at it and look into it, you attract it. You become interesting. Aya asked the wrong sort of questions, and--" Omi looked directly at Ken.

Ken nodded because he'd heard the warning. He wasn't sure he understood it, but he'd heard it. He planned to ignore it because he didn't want Weiss to be a three man team again.

Just that. Ken would have done that for any of them; Aya wasn't anything special.

As they headed toward where Aya was talking with the maybe-ghosts, Ken thought that the attracting attention thing made some sense as an explanation for why _Aya_ wasn't supposed to research.

Aya was already having trouble hiding. He didn't need to dress in fluorescent green and carry a flashing sign.

____

The ghosts went with the storm, and they never came back. The doors and windows went back to opening as expected.

After that, any time there was thunder and they were both home, Ken went to sit with Aya or dragged Aya off to watch football on television. They sat closer than they would have otherwise because they both needed to remember that they weren't alone.

Aya, left on his own, would stare at the door to the shop or to his apartment and wait and hope. He accepted Ken's attempts at distraction without comment or visible gratitude, but Ken figured that Aya was just like that.

Ken could deal. Even if sitting together felt a little bit close to cuddling, Ken could deal. He was pretty sure Aya hadn't noticed.

Yohji had gotten enough of Aya's conversation with his parents that they all understood why Aya went off-script on the underground deathmatch job to try to murder Takatori Reiji. Aya's actions still made everything harder and more dangerous and still almost got him killed, but they understood.

Takatori's gaijin bodyguard gave Ken and Yohji another angle for research. He couldn't possibly have been human-- he was simply too fast and too accurate-- and he very definitely wasn't Japanese.

"Maybe supernatural shit is like plant species?" Ken suggested afterward. "Some things turn up everywhere. Some things look alike but really aren't. You know."

"Yeah." Yohji didn't look entirely satisfied. "I wish I'd seen him."

Ken wasn't willing to cut Yohji any slack on the subject. "It's your own damned fault."

Yohji lit a cigarette. "I had a lead." He didn't elaborate.

Yohji and Ken approached research from different directions. Yohji pursued stories, legends, rumors, memoirs; Ken looked for tools. 

Yohji slipped into libraries, both public and private, to follow his leads. 

Ken collected ofuda and omamori. He also experimented with fusui in the shop and the mission briefing room, but he was pretty sure that Aya would resist attempts to rearrange his apartment for better energy flow.

They both looked online for information about foreign ideas on protections from the supernatural, but neither of them were fluent in anything but Japanese, and Babel Fish's translations were... not actually helpful. As far as Ken could tell, it was because the vocabulary was too specialized and esoteric. The site just refused to translate a lot of the most important words.

Calling it 'frustrating' felt too small to convey Ken's feelings on the subject. After Omi caught Ken about to hammer the keyboard with his fist, he banned Ken from online research.

Yohji bought dictionaries and persevered. Every so often, he gave Ken a few pages of notes.

According to him, iron was supposed to matter and salt and moving water, too. There was something about wearing clothes inside out and a lot about trees and plants that grew in places that weren't Japan.

"Some of them grow here, too," Yohji told Ken. "I think. Some of the sites about plants are heavy on the New Age woo-woo and don't give scientific names for anything, so it's slow going." He shrugged and lit a cigarette. "Once I make the connections, we've already got books."

Ken nodded because that made sense. Plants were the day job, after all, and general information books on plants usually talked about superstitions, medical uses, toxicity, and symbolism in addition to soil conditions and light and moisture requirements. He sighed. "I can look at those. If I get pissed off, they're replaceable. Also hard to break if I pound them."

Yohji looked sufficiently pleased that Ken was sure that Yohji'd been fishing for the offer. Yohji blew out smoke. "Better two sets of eyeballs on all the data. We'll notice different things, make different connections."

They kept three copies of every speculation, every possible fact, one for Ken, one for Yohji, and one for Omi.

Omi gave them a budget. 

Ken ran over it a lot, but what-the-hell, it wasn't as if he had a better use for his Night Job pay. 

Aya thought all beer tasted like crap.

____

To begin with, Riot was a fairly ordinary mission. Yohji getting shot wasn't ordinary, however, and the aftermath-- Weiss didn't usually deal with the corpses of people they'd liked.

Ken was pretty sure that Yohji hadn't wanted to leave Maki's body in Riot's headquarters after their targets were finally dead. Ken had considered it was sentiment.

Yohji hadn't even spent an hour with her. He didn't owe her anything.

When Maki's ghost wandered down the stairs into the mission briefing room during the next thunderstorm, Ken realized that Yohji's concern might have been entirely practical.

Ken made a mental note that the ofuda he'd placed on the doors into the building couldn't keep ghosts out. Then he realized that he'd used different ofuda at each potential entrance. Possibly only one had failed, and he had no way to know which.

There were probably ofuda that hadn't been tested at all, and Ken had no way to know that either.

Yohji went very still. After several seconds, he said, "I'm sorry." His voice sounded rough enough that Ken knew the words were sincere.

Probably, if Yohji hadn't been on heavy painkillers, he'd have gone for the booze that night. He just wasn't that level of self-destructive, not then.

Maki stared at Yohji. Her form flickered between how she'd looked when they'd found her and how she must have looked before. Her lips moved.

Ken didn't hear any words, but Yohji seemed to.

"I'm still sorry," Yohji said. "You deserved better."

The ghost seated herself on the bottom curve of the spiral staircase. She shrugged. Her eyes moved to take in Ken and Aya and Omi. Her lips moved again.

Yohji looked around. He pointed at Aya and said his name. Yohji then repeated the process for Omi and for Ken.

Maki smiled and said, "Pleased to meet you."

Ken gave her a small bow. "And I you."

Omi and Aya looked puzzled.

"I'm also sorry," Ken added. "We were too late."

Maki shook her head. She looked at Aya and Omi again. "They still can't hear me," she said. "I don't know why."

"I don't understand why I can," Ken admitted. "You came for Yohji. I never met you while you were alive." He hesitated then added, "Can you tell me which way you came in? I'm trying to figure out how to make ghosts have to knock like ordinary people."

Ken caught Aya's sudden movement and equally sudden stillness out of the corner of his eye. Ken turned to look at Aya more directly.

Aya cleared his throat. "That's... sensible." There was a rawness in his expression, though, that made Ken worry.

Omi said, "We're not trying to keep _them_ out, Aya-kun." He sounded like he meant it.

Ken couldn't have said it with a straight face; his fear would have leaked through. Ken would absolutely lock Aya's parents outside if it meant that the ghosts of people they'd executed couldn't get in.

Aya wouldn't melt in the rain. He could talk to them in the alley or somewhere else that wasn't where the team ate and slept.

Ken had heard a lot more stories about angry ghosts than about friendly ones. He looked at Maki. "Would you be willing to test different doors? If it wouldn't hurt you, I mean."

Maki laughed. The sound was disconcerting because it felt more solid than she looked. "Why not?" She shrugged. "I only wanted to tell Yohji-san that it's okay."

"It's really not," Yohji said.

"I wish we knew why Aya-kun and I can't hear her." Omi looked more than a little frustrated. "Maki-san, would a funeral offering help you? We have incense and... a few other things." His hand twitched to indicate the cupboard that they'd stocked as a just in case for Aya's parents coming back a second time.

Maki blinked and asked, "What's the short kid want?" 

She was looking at Yohji, so Ken decided he didn't have to translate. Instead, he told Omi, "She can't hear you, either."

Omi blinked.

Aya made a sound as if he'd had an idea. He turned and eyed Omi for a moment. Aya looked less certain but still said, "It wouldn't explain Omi, but try introducing me as Fujimiya Ran."

Yohji was in the middle of explaining what Omi had said and why he'd offered, so Ken waited to say anything.

When Yohji finally finished, Ken said, "Maki-san, our friend with the red hair says his name is Fujimiya Ran." He bowed slightly, and Aya did the same.

"I'm honored to meet you," Aya said, sounding as if he meant it.

Maki grinned and sat up straighter. She clapped her hands. "I can hear him!"

Aya blinked at her. After a moment, he said, "Omi, is there another name that you think of as more you than Tsukiyono Omi?"

"I don't remember being anyone else," Omi replied. He rubbed the back of his head. "I mean, I've had cover names, but they're not _me_."

Yohji made a sound that Ken couldn't interpret. Then he said, "Maki, this is Bombay, one of my colleagues." He waved two fingers in Omi's general direction. "He goes by Omi when we're not working."

Omi didn't look like he was pleased by that introduction, but he didn't protest.

"Would you like me to call you Omi?" Maki said. She sounded as if she wasn't convinced Omi would hear her but was still willing to experiment.

Omi's expression went to lying cheerfulness. "Maki-san. I'm sorry, too."

Ken felt something acidic in his belly. He wanted not to understand.

Bombay was the only part of Omi that was real. That made the issue of Aya-- _Ran_ \-- having lied about his name seem tiny. There might be a good reason for Aya not to use his real name. Omi, though...

Ken wanted to burn Kritiker to the ground. He wanted to erase the names of everyone who'd trained Omi from every registry in the country. Ken's hands clenched around weapons that weren't there.

Maki answered Omi's smile with one of her own. "My murderer is dead. That's all I needed from you." She looked at Yohji again. "I also wanted to ask if you had any messages I could carry." She looked a little embarrassed. "I can't promise because I don't know how it all works, but I thought I could try."

"Tell her I'm sorry," Yohji said. He cleared his throat. "I didn't-- I thought dead was dead, so I never offered anything to help her move on. Maybe nobody did. I don't... I don't know where her ashes are or if--" He shook his head.

"I'll find out," Omi said. "I can do that much, Yohji-kun."

"I can, too." Yohji sounded bitter, as if he was judging himself for not having done it sooner. "The records aren't secret."

Ken thought about the fact that he'd never burned incense for Kase. He really should have, even if Kase hadn't died trying to help him, but Kase had. Ken owed him for that.

"I can look," Maki said. "Somewhere near that building, right? If she's there, I'll find her." She nodded firmly.

____

Maki didn't come back until after Ken had found out that Kase didn't need incense and prayers.

Until after Ken sent Kase ahead to Hell and started having major and personal concerns about Kase's vengeful ghost finding its way to the Koneko. Ken was almost certain that crossing an ocean would be protection, but he'd had to admit that it was only a fantasy solution.

Kritiker had a longer reach than any ghost.

After Yuriko's plane left, Ken kept a quiet vigil, waiting for word that it had landed safely in Australia.

Aya shouldn't have known what was going on, but he brought convenience store sushi and beer. He sat next Ken almost the entire time. The only time he said anything was when he excused himself for a toilet break.

Ken didn't have words for what it meant that he wasn't alone, so he didn't try to talk either.

Omi and Yohji took care of the job that they'd all four been scheduled to do that night.

Ken was almost completely certain that no one outside the team ever knew he'd stayed home or that Aya had sat next to him, silent company, while Omi and Yohji were out.

After Omi and Yohji were home and clean, after the plane landed, Ken asked, "Am I stupid, Aya? I keep fucking up things I ought to--" He shook his head because he didn't have words.

Aya didn't respond immediately. When he did, he said, "You haven't had to harden yourself before. Our targets were... They were never real for you, never anything but monsters or collateral damage. You knew. You couldn't not. You just... Part of you always reacts like Kritiker is temporary-- like ice on the sidewalk, I suppose, like all you have to do is walk carefully and wait for the thaw. Instead..."

"Winter forever?" Ken tried to make the words light but couldn't quite manage it. He studied his beer. "I don't want to become Yohji," he said at last.

"Worse to become Omi," Aya replied.

Ken didn't have an answer to that one, so he drank his beer.

____

When Maki came back, she told Ken, "I found Yohji-san's friend." She didn't offer more details on that, just smiled and said, "Since that's done, I can test things for you."

Ken nodded. "It would help." He hesitated, considering telling her about Kase and then deciding against it. He wasn't entirely sure that she understood that they were assassins. 

He wasn't worried that she'd out them. She was a ghost. If ghosts could tell people things like that, there'd be a lot more closed police investigations. Mostly, Ken was concerned that she'd decide not to help any further.

She'd gotten Yohji what he'd asked for, a favor for the help he'd tried to give her. Anything beyond that was her taking risks she didn't have to.

Ken said, "While you were out there, did you see--?" He had no idea how to finish the question, but he thought he needed to be specific. "We aren't sure what supernatural things are out there or which ones might be... hostile."

Ken didn't want to tell Maki about Aya's stalker. That wasn't Ken's secret.

Maki met Ken's eyes with a vacant cheerfulness that rivaled Omi's most obvious mask. "Not all ghosts stay ghosts," she said softly. "Some of them eat other ghosts. Some of them..." She shrugged. "I don't know what they are. I think they're more Princess Mononoke than My Neighbor Totoro, just urban. They like the city, and they barely notice me."

Ken thought she sounded like she was a schoolgirl relaying gossip. He half expected her to start talking about blood types and image flowers. "It's probably better not to be noticed," he said. He meant it, but he tried to match her tone. "It's just we've met ghosts, and we... We sometimes see weird stuff when we're doing surveillance. We really, really, really don't want to run a sting on a kitsune."

Ken wasn't sure that kitsune were an actual real thing, but they might be, and everyone knew stories about them. There were more stories about ghosts, of course, but Ken didn't need to ask about the reality of ghosts.

Ken was both disappointed and relieved that nothing he tried actually hurt Maki. Most of the ofuda and omamori proved to be merely decorative. The ones that worked came from specific shrines and didn't look obviously different from the ones that didn't. 

Ken could get more from those shrines, but him not being able to perceive any hint as to why those were better meant that the power probably came from the maker. Ken and his teammates could copy the things to the tiniest physical detail and still not manage anything that would stop a ghost.

Maybe it was the ink. Ken didn't have any good way to test for, say, the blood of left handed virgins. It probably wasn't that. He hoped it wasn't that, but he could come up with a lot of options that he couldn't test.

He tried drawing lines across thresholds with a variety of substances. Some of them were things he really hoped wouldn't work because they'd be a serious pain in the ass to keep on hand.

And, if salt worked, would table salt be different from rock salt? Was there enough salt in soy sauce to work? If so, was it brand dependent? Chalk was probably chalk, but charcoal could be made from different types of wood. At least, Ken thought so.

Willow ash worked, though. Maki didn't want to get within a meter of a doorway with a thick line of that across the threshold.

Ken frowned. The stuff would smear. Wind might scatter it. Also, it looked terrible.

Manx would definitely notice.

Ken cut a strip of black rubber off the edge of one of their store mats. He duct taped it over the line of ash. "Try this, please."

"I can still feel it, Ken-san," Maki said. "It's not as strong, but I don't think I could cross it."

Ken nodded. "I'll get some of those covers they use for cords that have to cross aisles with heavy foot traffic." Cutting it to fit properly would be a challenge. He frowned then rearranged things so that a couple of centimeters at either side of the threshold were clean of ash. "Does that change things?"

Maki hesitated. "No? I'm not sure I could squeeze through, but I'm only barely still here. Someone-- something-- stronger might be able to pry it open from that or something."

Ken didn't think that any of Weiss's victims would become strong ghosts. He hoped not. "I'll go for a close fit, then." He was going to have to pry things up regularly to replace the ash, just in case it stopped working when it got old.

Didn't that just sound like fun?

Asking Aya to help would be cruel, and Ken needed Yohji to find out why willow ash worked, so Ken would have to make Omi help.

Omi would do it, but Omi wouldn't be happy about it.

Ken decided not to worry too much about Omi's feelings.

Omi should just be glad that blood hadn't worked. Willow ash at least smelled sort of like something that belonged in a flower shop.

Also, Ken suspected that using their own blood would be like putting out a sign that announced who was sheltered behind the barriers. Using anyone else's... Well, they _could_ , but Maki had said that she'd found them because she had so recently touched Yohji's blood. 

Ken didn't like to think what might follow them home if they built barriers using the blood of a Dark Beast.

____

The next day, Yohji looked like he hadn't slept at all.

Ken figured that it was just from having stayed up to talk to his ghost, so he didn't ask and didn't joke about Yohji's hobbies.

Yohji came back from his first break twitchy as hell, acting a lot like he'd been chugging espressos instead of smoking.

Ken exchanged looks with Omi while Aya pretended not to notice. Ken wasn't sure if Aya was being socially awkward or was simply disinclined to interfere in what he considered a private matter. 

A month before, Ken would have assumed that Aya hated all three of them and was pleased to watch Yohji suffer. Now, Ken thought that unlikely, not impossible but still. Aya wasn't that much of an asshole.

Ken spent most of the day being glad that they didn't have a job scheduled for that night; Yohji looked a bit too much like he'd enjoy killing for killing's sake.

Yohji avoided Ken and Omi all day and disappeared into his apartment after the shop closed. His deadbolt clicked into place with force.

Ken who had been following in hopes of getting a chance to talk to Yohji stopped and stared at the door. He heard steps behind him.

"Let him be," Aya said softly. "I saw her, and it's not the sort of thing that talking helps."

"What the fuck do you know?" Ken snarled, spinning toward the other man. Ken's fists clenched. For a moment, he hated Aya.

Then Ken remembered Aya staring at closed doors, hoping without expecting.

"He knew she was dead," Ken said. He hoped Aya would understand the unspoken questions behind the statement.

Aya extended a hand as if he was going to touch Ken's arm. Then Aya let his hand drop. "Not here," he said. He nodded toward Yohji's door. "He already knows. No point pouring salt on the wounds."

"My room?" Ken asked.

Aya looked down the row of doors then nodded. 

Aya's apartment shared a wall with Yohji's. Voices didn't always carry through those walls, but Ken knew that Yohji would try to listen if he heard them talking. Ken's apartment was on the other side of Aya's, furthest from the stair.

Ken had never decided whether Omi was nearest the stair because he had seniority or because he didn't trust the rest of them to be ready to take down an attacker coming up the stairs.

Ken supposed that it made some sense. Omi's darts gave him range. The rest of them would have to let an opponent get a lot closer. Ken and Aya were also both limited to the sorts of attacks that forced them to break cover.

The whole bringing a knife to a gun fight thing.

Yohji's wire was good for silent murder and really easy to smuggle into places that checked for weapons, but it was also, unless Yohji got particularly lucky and had the right angle to snap a neck, slow.

Ken didn't like thinking about his teammates that way, but there was something creepy about spending that much time watching a target die and then going back to flirting with customers. 

Even without the going back to flirting with customers part, it was creepy as fuck.

Ken, at least, had to change and shower before falling into bed. Dried blood was a bitch to get out of sheets, and the wet stuff had a nasty habit of soaking through to the mattress.

When they got to Ken's room, he felt like he had to be a good host, so he rummaged in his cupboard and pulled out a small mesh bag of satsumas. He tossed one at Aya. "More where that came from."

Aya caught it. He stared at it as if he had no idea what to do with it.

Ken hooked a foot around his wastebasket so that it was between where he expected to sit and where he expected Aya to sit. Ken sank to the floor and started peeling his own satsuma.

"Her name's Murase Asuka." Aya set the satsuma on the floor. "At least, Yohji said so when he introduced us. She... she didn't always remember her name. Or his. She'd flicker visibly and then not be sure where she was. A couple of times, she panicked and started trying to warn Yohji about something. At least, I think that's what she wanted to do." He turned his head so that he wasn't looking at Ken's face. "Every time she did that, she... In those moments, she wasn't human. At all."

Ken's right index finger went through the rind of his satsuma and into the flesh. Juice trickled down his hand. "Wasn't human? Ghosts aren't usually. They're ghosts, after all."

Aya frowned as if Ken had said something offensive. "She looked like an oni." Aya picked up his own satsuma and focused on it for the better part of a minute. Then he said, "The flickers, the moments when we couldn't see her at all, kept getting longer." He dropped the peel in the wastebasket. "She asked him for help. I... don't think she meant revenge or rites or anything like that. She said, 'He doesn't want _me_ , but he says I'll do.'"

"Well, fuck."

Aya nodded.

"You followed him when he went looking?" Ken didn't doubt that Yohji had gone out. Given what Aya had said, Ken was pretty sure that Omi was the only one of them with sufficient self-control not to head out immediately.

Aya coughed. "I... I didn't let him go. I pointed out that the paper trail might take us farther. Kritiker told him she was dead, so finding out why they thought that seemed like a good idea."

Ken blinked. "I wouldn't have thought of that." Now, he wondered why Kritiker hadn't told him that Kase was still alive. Ken hadn't asked, just assumed, but Kritiker had to have known.

"They must have assumed you knew," Aya said very quietly.

Ken stared at Aya. "How did you--?" He shook his head. "I guess it's an obvious question. For me, anyway."

Anyone else would have asked more questions than Ken had. Ken felt guiltily glad that his lack of curiosity hadn't made anything worse.

"Yohji must being going out of his mind," Ken said. He knew it was an understatement. He made himself eat his satsuma. When he was done, he said, "Thanks for keeping him home. That could have been..." He shook his head.

Ugly. It would have been ugly. Somebody would have died. Probably-- possibly-- not Yohji, but Ken couldn't even pretend that it would be a step toward solving Yohji's actual problem.

Ken sighed. He put his hands on the floor behind him and leaned back, fixing his eyes on the ceiling. "This sucks. I'm going to have to take over Yohji's half of the ghost research."

Aya's laugh made the room warmer.

____

Ken supposed that it fit with the general fuckery that was their lives that Omi's ghosts were all still alive when Weiss met them.

Takatori Masafumi kind of underlined that the line between human monsters and other kinds of monsters was blurry as hell. Masafumi certainly looked human, and he'd walked around interacting with humans all his life. 

Ken just thought the whole gaining mass and sprouting tentacles thing was on the wrong side of the human/not human line. He also thought it wasn't something that happened randomly. 

Masafumi had fought like he knew how those tentacles were supposed to move.

Ken was sure that he, himself, would have needed at least a couple of hours to figure out how not to keep smacking himself in the face. The muscle control could not be intuitive for anyone who was used to having bones and joints and such. Also, surprise extra limbs would be a bitch and a half to manage.

In the aftermath of that fight, Ken applied triple layers of protections to all of their spaces.

Omi was focused on the horror of 'Masafumi-nii.' Aya was wrestling with the idea that Omi was a Takatori. Yohji was still prone to disappearing to check out hints about what might have happened to Murase Asuka.

That left Ken on his own to consider the possibility that Takatori Hirofumi and Takatori Reiji might also not be human. Then he came up with some pretty frightening theories about how Takatori Mamoru had really become Bombay.

Because Omi hadn't so much forgotten his name as had it stripped from him so that he would be forced to seize hold of any offered replacement.

Had Bombay been given to Kritiker as a kickback for not harassing youkai? Except that that didn't fit with Weiss being sent after the Takatori now.

Had the Takatori fallen behind on their payments?

Ken was becoming so very, very cynical. He tried not to hate himself for it.

The only thing against Ken's theories was that Omi showed zero signs of not being human. Maybe that was why they took his name? Or maybe him not being human needed some sort of ritual? A peach of immortality?

Ken would have liked to talk it over with someone-- preferably Aya because Aya never looked at him like he thought Ken was focused on the wrong thing-- but it became an even less safe subject when Omi revealed that Persia was also a Takatori.

Then Ouka's ghost started trying to entice Ken to tell her Omi's name so that Omi would hear her calling him. Ouka wasn't limited to visiting during thunderstorms, just, as far as Ken could tell, by dawn and dusk. She spent her nights circling their building, but she still hadn't found a way to get past the willow ash.

Ken lied and said that they hadn't figured out how to introduce Omi so that ghosts could talk to him. 

Ken had listened to three nights of Ouka singing about yearning for eternity with her brother's love to keep her warm and happy, about the wonders Omi could find if he'd just come outside and join her. Given the lies she was trying to tell Omi, Ken didn't feel even a tiny bit bad about lying to her.

Ken suspected that, if Omi had been able to hear Ouka singing, he'd have tidied away all of his things and willingly walked out to join her.

Not because Omi wanted what she was offering or because Omi had lost the ability not to obey but because Omi thought he owed her that.

Yohji also didn't mention Ouka's visits to Omi, but Ken could tell that Yohji heard her. Yohji had been quicker than Ken to keep Omi inside when Ouka might be lurking.

Once Omi saw her, he'd introduce himself somehow. They were on borrowed time because there would be another mission soon.

Ken hadn't had any luck yet in finding charms that would keep a ghost or youkai away from a person as opposed to away from a place. He was sure there was something out there, but testing was still the hardest part.

Nothing they'd tried had the slightest effect on Takatori Reiji's youkai bodyguards. Yohji had suggested that that might mean they were human, but Ken was still pretty sure he'd been joking.

The red haired gaijin had to be some sort of malicious fox spirit.

The next morning, Yohji joined Ken on his morning run. He did that sometimes, so it wasn't obvious as an attempt to talk to Ken privately.

"It's not her fault," Yohji said when they took a water break. "I think it's who killed her." He shrugged. "At least, that would make more sense. She was really into Omi, but she wasn't like _this_ about him."

Because Ouka also didn't know Aya's real name, Aya couldn't hear her, so he only found out when Ken dragged him to a park for lunch on the fourth day while Omi was at school and business was slow enough that Yohji could manage alone.

"It's too nice to stay in," Ken told Aya. Ken hadn't forgotten the possibility that Omi might have bugs in the shop or in their apartments.

Aya's eyebrows went up because there was a sharp wind rattling through the sidewalk display. The sun hadn't actually showed her face that day.

"Go." Yohji flapped a dismissive hand. "It's about time you two went on a date." He looked like he meant it, and Ken felt his face heat.

"It's not like that," Ken protested. Then he realized that the way he'd said the words made it sound very much like it was exactly that. "When I take someone on a date," Ken added, "I tell them that's what it is."

Aya very nearly smiled. "You should have more faith in Ken's honesty." It sounded enough like a reprimand that Yohji laughed.

"Go," Yohji repeated. "I'll make you cover for me some time. Oh, and bring me back a can of coffee."

Ken argued with Aya about the arrangements for the Iida wedding until they were three streets away from the shop and waiting at a crosswalk. "I do want privacy," Ken said, then, "mostly from Omi, but also..." Ken hesitated before taking the plunge. "It's... Ouka's haunting us."

For a moment, Aya looked younger and more vulnerable. "I wouldn't say anything to hurt her," he said, "no matter whose daughter she is."

The light changed.

"It's not that," Ken said as they crossed. "She's... She wants Omi to go with her to-- to wherever ghosts go, after."

"Oh." Aya sounded like he understood. He also sounded like it hurt. "A brother--" He seemed to choke on the words. "A brother shouldn't let his sister go alone."

Ken had no idea what the fuck he was supposed to say to the pain in that, so he let himself get angry. "We're not letting Omi--! No. No way. Don't make me shove you in a closet until after Yohji and I solve this."

"If my sister came back like that," Aya said, "I would go."

Which was almost exactly what Ken didn't want to hear. "She's a stalker, Aya. We've talked about those before. Just because yours seems to have given up--" Ken stopped in front of a bakery and pinched the bridge of his nose as the full meaning of Aya's words penetrated. "I didn't know you had a sister," Ken said. "I'm sorry."

"She's not dead," Aya told him. "They just don't think she's ever going to wake up."

Which both answered Ken's longstanding question about where Aya's money went and made Ken feel sick. "I'm sorry," Ken repeated. "Is there anything I-- we-- can do to help?"

"Forget I mentioned her." Aya's words were a request, not an order. "Just... Please drop it."

Ken nodded. He started walking again. "We're going to the shrine that has the most reliable ofuda. There's got to be some way to fumigate or something."

"An exorcist," Aya said, sounding as distantly amused as if he hadn't just admitted that he only had enough of his sister left to trap him with Kritiker.

If Aya could pretend, Ken could pretend. "Yeah," Ken said. "Whatever Omi might do after, I think we need an expert."

"Omi will break your noses. Breaking your fingers would mean you couldn't work."

"Doesn't mean I'm wrong," Ken told Aya.

"No," Aya admitted. "Fine. I'm in."

"Good. Yohji and I will do whatever the exorcist says needs doing. You will talk to Omi about expenses and why we need a bigger budget for incidental equipment."

Aya sighed. "Fine," he repeated, "but, some day, I would actually like lunch with you. As a date, I mean."

Ken blinked and turned those words over in his head until they made sense. "Okay. Wait-- Really?"

"Really. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to happen before we went to a love hotel together."

Ken choked on a laugh. "Asshole."


End file.
